Luggage carriers or article rack assemblies are used in a variety of applications to transport articles above an outer body surface of a vehicle. Such article carriers include a pair of slats or elevated siderails that are fixed to the outer body surface of a vehicle, a pair of bracket members disposed at the ends the slat or siderails, and at least one crossbar disposed between the bracket members as to be supported above the outer body surface by the bracket members. In many applications, two crossbars are employed with the second crossbar being secured either fixedly to the slats or siderails, or being adjustably secured via its own pair of bracket members disposed slidably upon the slats or siderails.
Each bracket member associated with a crossbar includes some form of locking mechanism with an actuating member for placing the locking mechanism in a locked or unlocked position. When the locking mechanism of each bracket member is in its unlocked position, the crossbar may be moved slidably along the slats or siderails to allow the crossbar to be repositioned to another location.
Unfortunately, this arrangement requires the user to unlock and lock each bracket member when repositioning the crossbar. First, one of the bracket members must be unlocked and then the user must walk around to the opposite side of the vehicle to unlock the other bracket member. Once the crossbar has been repositioned by the user, the user must place both of the bracket members in their locked position. This may pose an inconvenience to the user whenever the crossbar is repositioned.
Accordingly, an improved luggage carrier or article rack assembly allowing simultaneous locking and unlocking of both bracket members is desired. It would further be highly desirable to provide such a mechanism that will hold both bracket members in their locked and unlocked positions.